When your class is restless and loud during a rainy day, Heads Up Seven Up can settle down the class for some quiet time. Select seven students to stand at the front of the room. Ask all the other students to put their heads down on the desk with one thumb raised. Once the classroom is settled, let the seven children choose a player with his head down on the desk. The seven players push down the thumb of one person apiece. They return to the front of the room. The students with the pressed-down thumbs guess who selected them. If they guess correctly, the student who pressed the thumb is replaced by the person they selected.
Round Robin is a well-structured game that teaches children the value of ad-libbing while providing entertainment when trapped indoors. Write the first paragraph of a story and pass it to one of your students. She has four minutes to write a second paragraph to continue the story before she passes it to another student. Allow the paper to circulate through your classroom once. Read the contents of the story to yourself and then share it aloud.
The elephone game teaches children how words as well as stories distort over time. It also gives you some much needed quiet from the restless students. Move the desks out of the way. Sit the children in a circle. Choose one child to start the game. Ask him to come up with a word without speaking it aloud. Once he knows the word, he whispers it to a student sitting next to him. She passes it on until it goes all the way around the circle. The last child to hear the word will tell you what it is. The first child confirms whether it's the right word or if it got distorted as the game progressed.
Sixth-grade children crave physical activity, so confining them to a small room for a rainy day can leave them restless. Freeze and Go allows the children to get out of their seats and enjoy some physical activity. Two students stand at the board and act out a scene. At any time, another student can call out “freeze.” The actors must freeze. The child who initiated the freeze takes the place of one of the actors, assuming his pose. When the child is ready, she says “go” and the act resumes, but with a new storyline.